Cigarettes
by Lucifer Hisaki
Summary: All he had to say was 'Have you decided to accept my offer, Naoe' A companion to Jackets. Post OVA.


**Cigarettes**  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Mirage of Blaze, cause if I did we had an English version of the novels already.  
**Fandom:** Mirage of Blaze  
**Pairing:** Takaya/Naoe implied  
**Rating:** PG  
**AN:** I just wrote this on the fly and in reality, I don't think I got Naoe that good but only you guys can tell me. Oh and this is unbetaed but I did the best I could. Review?  
**Summary:** All he had to say was "Have you decided to accept my offer, Naoe?" 

It's been weeks, _months_ since you seen him.

You make the excuse that you are pondering on his last statement. You tell yourself that you need to strategize on it. You want to find out what he means. A cigarette hangs from the corner of your mouth, unlit, untouched.

You gaze out unto the scenery before you. Just earlier you exorcised an annoying ghost at the request of a client. Your pockets are filled with the Yen. Yen, she has given to you, your reward, your payment. You told him that this is not a charity. You do this so you can live comfortably. That was why you went with that man as a secretary and bodyguard. You needed the money. For what?

Alcohol, lots of it. You are not an extreme drinker. You just prefer the savory but bitter tang of it. It is like him, you suppose. Addicting but bitter. You drink at least once per day, preferably at night so you can sleep without nightmares. You use the most bitter and expensive ones, only the highest quality can do. Like _him_.

You dream of the events that transpired 30 years ago. With Minako and him. You remember your anger, your pain, your regret. You will never forget. He made sure of that, every single time you look at him, you are reminded of that night. It?s bitter torture.

It is cold tonight. The snow is falling in Joetsu, home of the Kasugayama Castle and your dying place. You do not shiver or notice it. You are numb in your black leather jacket and turtleneck. You exchanged your working clothes for something comfortable and casual. Tonight, you want to be different, normal.

You haven't shaven in days; your face itches a bit. Your hair is equally unkempt. You do not care. You have been on this road before. You are unclean, physically and mentally. He would laugh at you now. Haruie would force you into the bathroom and Nagahide would just walk away, smirk and laugh with him.

So you stay away. You told your client that it was for some ritual. She would not know, she is not a devoted person and you are the monk. You do not smell. Your spicy cologne has covered that.

You toy with the thought of getting a concubine to play with, to romp around with and be _warm_. You shake your mind out of the thought. He would not be happy if he knew. Just like you were when you noticed he smoked your brand of cigarettes in Kyoto. No matter how hard you try to hide that fact he will know. He is like that.

You stand and walk away. Your feet taking you with no destination implanted into them. The cigarette is still cold and you make no move to light it. Nor you will in this night.

You look up into the clear sky and ponder on the moon like most love-struck people do. You are envious of it, of him. You meditated with him once and that was the center of his thoughts. It is in sight but unattainable. Luminous and bright yet mysterious and dark; tempting you with its beauty, and power. You want to reach out and touch it. You want to break it, possess it, _love_ it.

You want him. You made that very adamant over the years.

You do not care what skin he is in. Ugly, beautiful, male, female, short, tall. None of it matters. You only want the soul. The soul you have seen after you became Kanshousha; the injured persona in the cave, volatile, defiant, unstable but strong, the force that took away the ghost of your mother with only a word.(1)

You take your gloved hands out of the pockets of your pants, one leaving with a lighter. Faintly you note that your wandering body stands in the wintry park some distance from your parked car.

Before you is a frozen dormant sakura. You sit down at its trunk and stare outward. The image of his face comes into your mind again. You wonder if he has remembered everything now. His commanding authority is a nod to his previous life. His eyes had glowered at you twice, yellow orbs of power. A signal of his return to power. A return that you played no part in thanks your reticence.

You stayed away after the mirror incident. You only came back once to his door at the request of Haruie. It wasn't a very long visit. You stayed only an hour and relayed all the information you gathered, information you gave Haruie to relay, weeks before. Information she already gave.

Then you disappeared again. Leaving only the words, "Keep it," behind.

You don't want it back. It is his now. Just because he was holding it when you entered doesn't mean anything. That was not your made wristband on his arm. You do not know where that had gone. The design is, after all, not uncommon in this day and age.

The harsh winds hisses at your face and you unconsciously dig into your jackets upright collar. Your pants are wet from the snow but you do not move. The lighter drops into the snow. A voice calls out your name.

You do not look up, you know who it is. It's not him but someone else. A person you would very much go away at the very least or be destroyed. He is here to taunt you again. You do not acknowledge him. Your hand moves to pick up the dropped lighter. His is faster.

You stay silent and do not grace him anything but a raised head. He lights your cigarette and hands back the tool. You take it and put it back into your pocket. He goes to sit at your right. Your hand aches for a blade.

He is silent for an hour. So are you as you puff on your cancer stick. Exhale, inhale, remember, forget, love, hate...

When he speaks it is of no surprised. You are not surprised by his words at all; you were in fact looking forward to this conversation.

All he had to say was "Have you decided to accept my offer, Naoe?"

You turn to him and said nothing but that is enough. He knows. He won.

**Post Notes:**  
(1) Allusion to Part II of my NaNo fic.

The guy at the end is whoever you make it out to be. I made it clear its not Kageya(Takaya/Kagetora). This may or may not be a small interlude for my NaNo fic (chronologically pre-Part III). For his clothing, I refuse to believe that the only things he wears is a black suit and horrid monk robes. The suits are understandable when he wants to make an impression and fighting spirits but are probably not a necessity 24/7. Not to mention I think he would look hot in a knee-length leather jacket and turtleneck but that's just my opinion. I would also like to state that like in Jackets, I had no idea how to title this so just picked the one thing that appeared the most in the fic. Jackets fit that story, don?t know so much about Cigarettes.

Since you readers don't know, I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo this year and going to be working on a 2 part, possibly 3 part Mirage of Blaze novel. More information is available in my Livejournal. It's all posts dealing with NaNo from "NaNowriMo Restart" to most recent.

Review plz.


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